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View Full Version : Daily crashes, and only one PATA channel on computer


dochawk
10-18-2009, 12:52 AM
Three or four years ago, I upgraded a Phillips "Directv DVR" Tivo with a 500GB drive.

For almost a week, it's been failing to come back up from its "shutdown" mode about once a day, needing an unplugging. I think it froze during a program or two.

This sounds like time for another drive. (I'm a couple of years from this room being ready for a big screen and an hd unit).

The catch is that after a recent upgrade, the only remaining non-laptop only has a single PATA channel. To make things more complicated, it still needs a bootstrap drive to get into FreeBSD where it has a 3T zraid array.

So my thinking at the moment is to disconnect the CD, boot into FreeBSD, and dd the entire tivo drive to a file. Then shutdown, swap the new drive in, and dd back to it.

Then do I need to swap the boot drive out and boot the mfstools from a CD to make it work, or will I be good to go?

And if this doesn't do it . . . *shudder* . . .

hawk